Simon the Pharisee

And I think the second dynamic to that has to do with how I saw myself.

I think there's this great moment in Luke where Luke is telling the story of the woman who breaks the jar of expensive ointment on the feet of Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee.

And he tells the story of, you know, who's going to love more? And the conclusion is the one who understands that his debt is greater That's the one who's going to love more.

And I think at some fundamental level, it's easy, particularly in our virtue signaling world, particularly in our current social construct, to think that we're all good and we're all okay.

You ready for the Word today? Yeah! Come on, Mark chapter 14 and verse 3.

And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, he sat at the table.

A woman, this is Jesus.

A woman came having an alabaster flask, a very costly oil of spicknard.

worship that changes the atmosphere there is nothing normal about this house there is nothing normal about this house in fact it was the most peculiar set of characters tensions it's a very different environment to your regular Time of fellowship with Jesus.

Let me give you a few thoughts as to why.

It's the home of Simon the leper.

Simon was healed by Jesus, but was still a Pharisee.

And I think the picture that we can get of that in the Gospels is when, do you remember in Luke's Gospel chapter 7, a woman with a sinful reputation has found Jesus and he has found her and he has forgiven her.

And she goes to Simon the Pharisee's house and she anoints his feet and weeps and washes his feet with her tears.

and Simon the Pharisee, an enemy of God's people, criticizes her, and he says, surely Jesus should know who this is.

And what does Jesus do? Here is a person in the presence of Jesus, and the enemies are coming in and accusing, and Jesus defends her.

And he says, she loves much because she has been forgiven much.

It's amazing.

Now you write of the great contrast between the Pharisee and the woman who came into his house from the streets in the account at the end of Luke 7.

Tell us about the differences between these two, that Pharisee and that woman, and why the differences are important.

Well, we have a character contrast going on here.

We have a man, and then we have a woman.

And we have an upscale Pharisee on the one hand, and the other has a reputation as a sinner, probably a prostitute.

The one owns a house.

The other lurks about in the street.

Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.

And Jesus answering said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you.

And he answered, Say it, teacher.

A certain moneylender had two debtors.

One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.

When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both.

Now which of them will love him more? Simon answered, The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.

And he said to him, You have judged rightly.

And so that's who this guy is.

Verse 3, he says, especially because you are expert in all customs and questions which have to do with the jews therefore i beg you to hear me patiently you know my and right we have to have patience when you're listening to someone's testimony because it can be long so here we go he goes he goes in verse four my manner of life from my youth which was spent from the beginning among my own nation at jerusalem All the Jews know, they knew me from the first, if they were willing to testify, that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived a Pharisee.

Pharisee was that social religious group, man, that had the rabbinical authority of the Mosaic law over the people.

Josephus says that there was about 6,000 Pharisees during the second temple.

And so the Apostle Paul, they were known as those who were above average of men who took the things of the law more serious than the average man.

And so the Apostle Paul grew up religious this way, very strict, and he adhered to all those things.

And so the reason why he had this radical background and God saved him from all of the trash that he saved him from was because it was going to be an example to the whole world of longsuffering, the longsuffering love of God and the mercy of God that if he can save Paul, he can save anybody.

If he can save the sinful woman in Luke chapter 7 who washed Jesus' feet with her hair and she was a known sinner, that means that she was a prostitute, came and was weeping at his feet and washed his feet and kissed his feet and was weeping over her sins there with the Lord.

The guy's talking in his own head.

And Jesus said, hey, Simon, I got something to tell you.

And he said, well, tell me, teacher, what is it? And he said, well, he said there were two people that saved money, that owed money to a certain money lender.

One owed him 500 denarii and the other owed him 50.

Neither of them had the money to pay him back.

So he forgave the debts of both of them.

Which one do you think loved him more? And Simon said, well, I guess probably the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.

And Jesus said, you've judged correctly.

You could go talk to Mary called Magdalene, who had seven demons cast out of her.

But the, the power of the message is that Jesus takes what is broken and he uses it, whether it's the wicked, sinful woman in Simon the Pharisee's house who is so overcome in emotion that she is weeping and having to wipe her tears from Jesus' feet with, with her own hair so that she can anoint his feet with oil, or whether it is a woman with seven demons possessing her.

We don't know where, why she was possessed.

We don't know what she had done before that to get possessed or, or if something had been done to her.

And further, one great hindrance to self-knowledge is the spirit of self-defense.

The Pharisee who stood and prayed by himself, thanking God that he was not as other men are, is the type of those who turn from the confessional.

The publican is the type of the penitent upon his knees, for what is the Sacrament of Penance but the Sacrament of self-accusation? We are all tempted to excuse ourselves.

When the eyes and ears of the world are open upon us, we are all full of apologies or denials.

It is the perfection of such sorrow to be self-forgetting.

As it is purified of self, it remembers only Jesus.

St. Mary Magdalene, when she hurried to the Pharisee's house and stood behind our divine Redeemer, weeping, was full of sorrow and of love, and yet what was her contrition then compared with her sorrow when she stood by the cross of Jesus on Calvary or when she lingered all alone and weeping at the empty sepulcher and knew not where they had laid Him? What made this change in her sorrow but the passion of Jesus, the true and divine crucifix on which she had gazed on Calvary? We read in the writings of Blessed Angela of Foligno that she passed through eighteen degrees of compunction, beginning with a confession in which through natural shame she concealed her sins and ending in the sorrow of the saints.

After she had made many steps in the way of contrition, she tells us that one day at the sight of the crucifix, a flood of sorrow and self-accusation came upon her with a sense of her ingratitude to Him whom her sins had pierced so that she was overwhelmed with a grief beyond control.